Unitil Corporation, (Unitil.com), a provider of natural gas and electricity to customers in New England, made additional progress this morning as crews work to restore power to the majority of customers by this evening.
As of 12:00 p.m., approximately 1,100 Unitil customers in New Hampshire remained without power, down from a Monday morning peak of approximately 11,668 customers.
In response to the damage caused by Monday’s high wind event, additional third-party crews from New York were brought in this morning to assist with the ongoing restoration effort in Unitil’s service territory on the New Hampshire Seacoast.
“Our crews have managed to restore power to over 90% of affected customers within the first 24 hours of the storm and are working to bring our remaining customers back online as soon as possible. This has been a challenging storm and we appreciate the patience of our customers throughout the event,” said Unitil External Affairs Manager Alec O’Meara.
The combination of high winds and heavy rain resulted in significant damage in some areas, including numerous trees and wires down and multiple broken poles. Unitil continues to work with first responders to gain access to some areas where roadways were blocked by debris. Crews have also been working to address additional non-storm related outages.
While the power restoration effort is expected to be substantially completed by tonight, it may take longer for customers in isolated pockets that experienced more extensive damage and those with individual service issues.
Customers who remain without power after their neighbors have been restored are urged to call Unitil customer service and report the outage again. Some of these customers may have service issues specific to their home and will require work by a private electrician before restoration can be completed. Once the work is complete, customers should call customer service to have restoration completed.
In the event of downed wires, assume all cables and wires that have fallen or dangling are energized and stay away. Be sure to avoid wet ground or puddles near a downed line because water conducts electricity. In addition, keep away from all flooded and debris laden areas because they may be hiding downed lines. Stay in a safe place and avoid driving in damaged areas so you don’t interfere with rescue and restoration efforts.
Unitil will be communicating throughout the event through Public Service Announcements (PSAs), our website, our customer call center and through the media. We also encourage customers to follow along with our storm updates via Facebook, our Twitter feed (@Unitil) and we will be providing real-time outage information online at unitil.com/map.
Customers experiencing outages should call 1-888-301-7700 or report online at unitil.com/report-outage.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR MEDIA:
Unitil asks that when reporting outage information, outlets time stamp the information. Outage numbers change hourly and we wish to make sure the information customers receive is consistent and understandable. Re-Tweets and re-posting of old information without referencing a time can create confusion.
